Tuesday, April 17, 2012

Grimalkin the Witch Assassin

Now I am ready--ready to kill. Ready to kill them all. I have become the mother of death. She trots at my heels, hanging onto my skirt, giggling with glee, leaving wet footprints of red blood on the green grass. Can you hear her laughter? Listen for it in the cries of my victims. p 372

For the ninth book in the Last Apprentice series (not counting the companion novels) we get a change of narrator.

Tom only appears briefly in this tale, as this book follows Grimmalkin. At the end of Rage of the Fallen, Tom had sliced off the Fiend's head. Grimalkin took it to keep it safe, and so we follow her as the Fiend's allies (including a terrifying new creature) hunt her down.

Lots of adventure, lots of death, less blathering on about right and wrong and shades of gray.

A different apprentice, too, this time, Grimalkin's apprentice.

I missed Tom, the Spook, and Alice, but I loved Grimalkin's voice. I think giving her a book to carry the plot forward really helps keep the series fresh. I loved seeing how she saw the world and her job. I loved learning her backstory, but it was often woven into the narrative a bit clumsily. On the other hand, we get a lot of background information on witches, witch-lore, and witch politics without the usual info-dump by Gregory or Alice.

This is one of my favorite books in the series.

I need to reread it as a final copy though. While there was A LOT of white space and notes of art to come, only the opening pages were illustrated. I didn't realize how much Patarick Aeeasmith's work really adds to the overall feeling of this series until it was missing. It was like a giant hole in my reading experience.